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Cartographer installation

Cartographer is Eddy current bed probe, which makes bed meshing a lot faster and a lot more percise. There are several such probes out there. Most known is Beacon, which is made by US fellas, Cartographer, which is made by UK fellas and quite some of them in AliExpress

They are known for their speed and accuracy. If regular probe accuracy is around 0.001mm, then Eddy current probes are 0.0001mm, which is 10x more accurate. Their probing speed is limited by printer head moving speed and printer motherboard CPU. In theory they can do some milion measurements per second

Here's a 10second video of 15x15 grid full bed mesh, which takes with regular Probe around 45 minutes

Installation

Hardware and mounting

For installation can use this mount, or original Beacon mount. Make sure to print it out of something that can sit near bed and wouldn't deform. PAHT-CF is good candidate or ASA/ABS if don't have anything better

Needed hardware:
4x M3x14 bolts original stock probe mount bolts. Stock probe has 2 bolts, there should be 2 extra that came with printer / official upgrade package as spare parts
2x M3 nuts to secure probe in place. Those didn't come with printer, had to buy
2x M2.5x12 had those with one of Qidi printers as spare parts too, can't remember if it was iFast or X-Max 3
Optional zipties to secure cable

After-installation needed config changes

Modify printer.conf

  • Comment out / remove whole [homing_override] section
  • Under [bed_mesh]
    mesh_min:25,25 # this needs to be set to 25,25 from stock 25,15
    speed:300 # increase speed for faster scanning, can leave stock
    probe_count:15,15 # increase points count, can leave stock
     
  • Add [cartographer] and [safe_z_home] sections following to their doc
    • under [cartographer] need to set y_offset: 25
    • under [safe_z_home] need to set home_xy_position: 162.5, 162.5
       
  • Remove / comment out any [probe] and [bltouch] sections
  • Follow Carto docs for initial calibration. It's super easy, just 2-3 steps
     
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